My guild recently did a test run for SWMonitor the other night. While functional, we didn't see enough to convince us to use it over askmrrobot.com. And yes, I know that you can upload monitor logs to askmrrobot.

 

The problem we saw was with the utility. There was no real reason to run live combat logging in its current form.

As you said, you can use MoniTOR to join the logs in realtime and then you don't need to rely on everyone to upload the logs to askmrrobot after each raid by one of the leaders. More analization tools and easier to digest data graphs/display are on the way as well to help analyze things post-wipe and make the proper adjustments.

The dps overlay was nice, but we found that our dps'ers were focused on the tool and not the fight. Granted, dps'ers like seeing their numbers, it just wasn't good for my guild. The tps overlay was pretty useless. We were kinda hoping that it would work in a who's on top of the aggro table, but it was pretty much just a who's doing the most tps. The hps overlay was also unneeded. The healers don't need to know their hps, they just need to make sure noone dies. And with hps still being affected by overheals, it isn't accurate.

Tracking overheals and blowthrough heals are in the works and while not 100% accurate given the current data provided in the logs, it should be pretty close. The threat display will be undergoing some dramatic changes to show hate positions for each individual enemy (something that is coming in the SWTOR 1.3 update). As for anyone focusing too much on any of the meters, the display of them are of course optional if they are too distracting. IMO, after the newness wears off, it's not likely something to be "stared" at anymore than you stare at the speedometer or odometer in your car while you are driving.

We also noticed some inaccuracies in the parser itself. Some players fight durations would be longer than others and sometimes each players program would show different numbers. In one fight, as the tank, I had a -75.6 tps. Not sure how that got calculated.

Not sure if this was where you saw the negative threat but on the minefield fight in Denova the boss does a memwipe every so often (the red message about him changing targets) that throws up a large negative hate value for those with a lot of threat (i.e. the tank).

I wanted to post this just so the developers could look into some changes or just fixes that my guild thought would make it better. Also, there needs to be a video maybe explaining the different functions of the program. As it stands, we had to figure everything out on our own, which turned off a couple of our raiders to begin with. (sidenote - we did read the join group faq and that part worked fine.)

A few videos would be a great idea. I'll look into those after we get this next update out.

Thanks a bunch for the feedback!

I cant even get onto the website as every link to http://www.swmonitor.com gets blocked by Bitdefender

saying it contains malware

why dont u fix that if its all so safe ?

We're getting very close to releasing a new build that should fix a lot of the connection issues that some players are having. There are also plans to spruce up the graphical output and analyzing tools as well. In my previous raiding game (EQ2) we used ACT a lot so I'm quite familiar with what it did and we'll be making MoniTOR do all of that and much more.

 

In the meantime though, you can use MoniTOR to join all the combat informat together and then output the raid data to combat log format (it's the save to .TXT option on the Parse Viewer in MoniTOR) and then import that into ACT or even better upload it to Ask Mr. Robot to see something with a bit more graphics.

OK that's a good idea. I'll admit, I took a little more time to go through the logs and figure out exactly what the different tabs are showing, and it's not so bad, but still confusing. I think the crux of it is that similar mobs do not have a unique identifier? So it's hard to see, for example, who the bombadiers or trando warriors are hitting on the Keph fight because all the bombadier logs are in one?

I'm guessing this is on Bioware's end?

Is there currently, buried among those tabs and logs in the parse view, a way to view incoming time stamped data by player with the attacker listed?

I cant even get onto the website as every link to http://www.swmonitor.com gets blocked by Bitdefender

saying it contains malware

 

why dont u fix that if its all so safe ?

I looked on the BitDefender website and didn't find any information on how to get them to actually check that the contents of our website are safe. I cannot even use their support form since that requires a serial number (I did however send a message to their sales contact point but I doubt anything will happen from that). If you can find some way for us to "fix" this please let us know.

And for some related information on the accuracy of BitDefender you might want to read Bad BitDefender Update Clobbers Windows PCs from a few years ago.

OK that's a good idea. I'll admit, I took a little more time to go through the logs and figure out exactly what the different tabs are showing, and it's not so bad, but still confusing. I think the crux of it is that similar mobs do not have a unique identifier? So it's hard to see, for example, who the bombadiers or trando warriors are hitting on the Keph fight because all the bombadier logs are in one?

 

I'm guessing this is on Bioware's end?

With the SWTOR 1.3 update the logs will be getting information in them that includes unique identifiers for each enemy even if they have the same name.

Is there currently, buried among those tabs and logs in the parse view, a way to view incoming time stamped data by player with the attacker listed?

To filter all incoming damage on a specific player do this: Double click on the encounter, double click on the player (Players tab), double click on "Damage Total (in)" (Summary Tab) and then select the Details tab.

Did the patch break this?

Nope, the existing version should work fine. It doesn't yet use the new unique enemy ID but it will continue to function.

I looked on the BitDefender website and didn't find any information on how to get them to actually check that the contents of our website are safe. I cannot even use their support form since that requires a serial number (I did however send a message to their sales contact point but I doubt anything will happen from that). If you can find some way for us to "fix" this please let us know.

 

And for some related information on the accuracy of BitDefender you might want to read Bad BitDefender Update Clobbers Windows PCs from a few years ago.

that article u linked is like 2 years old, ive been using bitdefender for a year, and its never once blocked a website

this is the 1st time its come up with a false positve on my machine.

for now the only way i could access the site is to manually exclude it, something im not happy abt doing.

Did the patch break this?

Thanks.

I looked on the BitDefender website and didn't find any information on how to get them to actually check that the contents of our website are safe. I cannot even use their support form since that requires a serial number (I did however send a message to their sales contact point but I doubt anything will happen from that). If you can find some way for us to "fix" this please let us know.

 

And for some related information on the accuracy of BitDefender you might want to read Bad BitDefender Update Clobbers Windows PCs from a few years ago.

As a bitdefender user i have reported the site to them for false positive checking

which they have done, given it the all clear and they have already sent out an update,

so bitdefender users should no longer be blocked - good news then

i guess if one anti-virus company has given it the all clear, then it must be safe

for users of other av products.

Have the developers of this parser discontinued MoniTOR? Their forms get no replies and haven't for some time now.

Gak's been busy lately, and I think he's about to go hiking/get eaten by a bear somewhere in Canada. I'm sure he hasn't forsaken the project.

Your app doesn't end fights at the "Event : ExitCombat" marker.

Seems to keep it going for a few minutes after which skews the stats.

I think you need to determine better when death occurs and when combat ends based on the event markers in the log.

I keep getting disconnected to an Ops group and with "read timeout". I have checked firewalls, antivirus and reinstalled it.

Any idea?

My guild uses this program and while it is wonderful, informative,and simple a number of us are having the same problem.

we cannot get the overlays to show up in game. it is being run in admin mode, and a few are running it in compatibility mode for xp with sp3 with the same results. is there a fix for this, aside from running swtor in windowed mode?

My guild was required to use this on raids to see performance. We also required by all recruits/applicants to use, to judge their over all sustained damage on parse dummies before being accepted into our guild. We ended up having to revert back to MoX because of all of the issues people were having. I think the developer is either MIA working on it or just completely dropped it all together.

We've been doing the same for months and haven't had any problems. Interesting that so many people are having issue.

We tried it last night, after I spent ages making a tutorial video on how to use it.

Epic fail. It wouldn't register that we were even in a party, therefore blowing out on the code generation. Double & triple checked everything, firewalls, buffs, everyone all running it at the same time, running it as admin, etc etc

Would post something in their forums as feedback, but can't see the wood for the trees amongst all the thousands of dodgy viagra & prescription adverts.

This looks like it was great a few months ago, but now if you look at their official forums, it's not something I'd trust opening up my firewall to ever again. It's obviously been abandoned, and the fact that askrobot recommends it is shameful.

we had pretty the same problem. Last week we installed the tool and tested it. It worked fine more or less. But after a week in the next raid we tried it again and it did not work anymore. We where not recognized as beeing in a operation.

The forums of the devs are spammed by spam bots an nobody cares